MCT announces its 2016-2017 Season

Milwaukee, WI … Milwaukee Chamber Theatre (MCT) announces its 42nd season, exploring the theme of “Misfits.” The 2016-2017 Season will feature five exciting productions performed at the Broadway Theatre Center in Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward.

The season kicks off in August with the Tony Award-winning comedy, VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE by Christopher Durang, August 11-28, 2016. September brings Tennessee William’s rarely produced A LOVELY SUNDAY FOR CREVE COEUR, September 21 – October 16, 2016. The season continues with Kenneth Lonergan’s comedy LOBBY HERO, November 23 – December 18, 2016. The new year begins with THE FEW, a compassionate new drama by Samuel D. Hunter, February 22 – March 19, 2016. MCT closes its 42nd season with a fast-paced and suspenseful version of the Charles Dickens classic, GREAT EXPECTATIONS, adapted by Gale Child Daly, April 13-30, 2017.

All productions will be presented at the Broadway Theatre Center, 158 N. Broadway, in Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward. Season tickets, $93 – $155, on sale now. Call (414) 276-8842 to purchase a subscription. Single tickets will go on sale on June 27, 2016; call the Broadway Theatre Center Box Office at (414) 291-7800. For more information, visit www.milwaukeechambertheatre.com.

Vanya and his adopted sister, Sonia, are living out their middle age in an old farmhouse in Bucks County, PA, after years of caring for their ailing, Chekhov-loving parents. But their quietly tedious existence changes dramatically once their movie-star sister, Masha, swoops in with her twenty-something boy toy, Spike, for a weekend of wild costume parties, voodoo dolls and family feuds. In its own deliciously madcap way, Durang’s Tony Award-winning play not only offers endlessly inventive comic twists, but some keen insights into the absurdities, challenges and agonies of twenty-first-century life as well.

The time is 1935, the place St. Louis, where Dorothea, a 30-something schoolteacher, dreams of marriage with her sometime beau, the high school principal. But Bodey, her kind-hearted German roommate, hopes to pair Dorothea up with her twin brother. While Bodey prepares for a match-making picnic at Creve Coeur Park, Helena, the local art teacher, arrives with secret plans of her own. In this rarely produced play, the incomparable Tennessee Williams envisions the comic side of heartbreak, while simultaneously creating characters that are tender, poignant and measurably human.

Lobby Hero

by Kenneth Lonergan
Nov. 23 – Dec. 18, 2016
Studio Theatre

Directed by C. Michael Wright
Featuring Chris Klopatek, Di’Monte Henning, Andrew Edwin Voss and Sara Zientek With way too much time on his hands, Jeff, a luckless young Manhattan security guard, is drawn into a local murder investigation. When William, his tightly wound supervisor, is called to bear witness against his troubled brother, and Dawn, a rookie cop, finds she must stand up to her seasoned partner, Jeff finds himself making some quick, irreversible decisions about right and wrong. Confirming him as a comic wizard, playwright Kenneth Lonergan delights with this irrepressible work, which just happens to be a comedy, a romance and a play of ideas all rolled into one.

It’s 1999; uncertainty and instability are in the air. Four years earlier, Bryan had abandoned his labor of love, a newspaper for truckers. Now he’s returned to small-town Idaho – with no word of where he’s been – and things have changed. His former lover is filled with rage, his new coworker is filled with incessant adoration, and his paper is filled with personal ads. From Samuel D. Hunter, award winning-author and recent recipient of the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant, comes this compassionate, gently-hued drama about lonely lives desperately searching for a renewed faith in humanity.

In this literary gem, Pip, an orphan boy, has a life-altering encounter one day on the moors when he helps an escaped convict named Magwitch. From this singular act of kindness, Pip starts on a mysterious and disturbing journey to manhood that is full of twists and turns, miraculously allowing him to advance in society while all of his great expectations seem to be coming true. Packed with curious and fascinating characters, shadow and light, Gale Childs Daly’s exceptional and bold reinvention of the classic Dickens novel is uncommonly tight and suspenseful – a fast-paced theatrical treat!

Season tickets, $93 – $155, on sale now. Call (414) 276-8842 to purchase a subscription. Single tickets will go on sale on June 27, 2016; call the Broadway Theatre Center Box Office at (414) 291-7800. For more information, visit www.milwaukeechambertheatre.com.

MILWAUKEE CHAMBER THEATREFounded in 1975, Milwaukee Chamber Theatre (MCT) produces intimate, high-quality, professional theatrical works of literary merit that engage and challenge the audience, while employing and nurturing principally local theatre artists. Under the leadership of Producing Artistic Director C. Michael Wright and Managing Director Kirsten Mulvey, MCT performs at the Broadway Theatre Center in Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward. For more information, visit www.milwaukeechambertheatre.com